Ethical concerns in female genital cutting by ProQuest

Description An initial ethical concern is what properly to call what the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as: all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the female external genitalia and/or injury to the female genital organs for cultural or any other non-therapeutic reasons.1 A name commonly applied, including by the WHO itself, is "female genital mutilation" but this description may be ethically inappropriate. Pricking, piercing, or incision of the clitoris and/or labia; stretching of the clitoris and/or labia; cauterization by burning of the clitoris and surrounding tissues; scraping (angurya cuts) of the vaginal orifice or cutting (gishiri cuts) of the vagina; introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina to cause bleeding, or of herbs into the vagina with the aim of tightening or narrowing the vagina; any other procedure that falls under the definition of female genital mutilation given above.5 Accepting the broad coverage of these categories, it has been observed that [w]orldwide, an estimated 130 million girls and women have undergone (FGC). It ranges from nearly 90 percent or higher in Egypt, Eritrea, Mali and Sudan to less than 50 per cent in the Central African Republic and Cte d'Ivoire, to 5 per cent in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda ...Women who have undergone FGC are also found among African immigrant communities in Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States.7 Consequences Ethical concerns are raised not simply from the inherent bodily insult of FGC, which ranges from minor cuts to major procedures, the more invasive of which, such as infibulation, have caused all forms of FGC to be characterized as mutilation, but from its known consequences.

COMMENTARY
Ethical concerns in female genital
cutting
Rebecca J. Cook
Description A WHO study critical of the procedure has
An initial ethical concern is what properly to call conceded that:
what the World Health Organization (WHO) in a society where there is little economic
describes as: viability for women out